First Night Skiing at Greek Peak 12/10/10

Lake effect snow hit central NY and piled up in various depths in various locations this week. Greek Peak was closed Monday through Wednesday to focus on covering acreage with man-made snow. They are doing a great job with the help of Lake Ontario contributing 16" of fluff. Greek Peak hasn't had a thaw since they opened so there is no ice. Just really nice packed powder with plenty of loose and tracked powder.

I left my office right after a coworker's birthday celebrations. Chocolate cake seemed like the right thing to eat before going skiing for happy hour. As I drove east, the snowfall picked up and the roads turned white. Snow depths deepen. This is a good sign. It was full-on winter as I arrived at Geek Peak. 25 degrees, winds out of the south at 25mph, which seems pretty unusual considering all the blustery snow. Typically the wind is out of the WNW, but today it was coming from the other side, so there was a nice wind shadow on the lift ride, until you get 7/8s of the way up to where the wind was swirling over the top of the hill.

I got into the zone and skied 10 top to bottom runs. I got a good workout because my legs started to burn during the last few runs. Eleysian Fields skied quite well with the steep right side boasting ungroomed chopped powder with frosting on top. Alceme was a nice diversion. Karyatis was open, but I didn't bother with it, since the other two were steeper and had more powder.

I noticed that about 75% of the people there were on snowboards. There were hardly any skiers. Just one telemarker.

It's hard to get good pix at night.

Powderqueen wrote

I got into the zone and skied 10 top to bottom runs. I got a good workout because my legs started to burn during the last few runs. Eleysian Fields skied quite well with the steep right side boasting ungroomed chopped powder with frosting on top. Alceme was a nice diversion. Karyatis was open, but I didn't bother with it, since the other two were steeper and had more powder.

It's hard to get good pix at night.

Pics look pretty good to me.  That CNY life is also looking pretty good about now.  A nice little hill you can hit daily, lake effect in the forecast. It also seemed like being that far west you got less of the unfrozen stuff yesterday.

How many days a year do you put it a Greek?  Gotta help you get in shape faster.  It's hard to get to where you (I) need to be skiing one or two days a week tops.

Nice report PDQ.

This will be the first winter in quite a while where I won't be hitting up Greek Peak (4 years of Cornell undergrad + 3 of law school, hence the moniker CUontheslopes...). It's a nice little mountain that skis a lot wider than most in the region. It has  lots of little faces and sides to explore, which is unusual for a CNY hill. The one thing I won't miss is the set of 1 and 1A double chairs that were the bane of my existence. I used to come and ski 6 runs in an hour then head back to Ithaca because it's literally 9-10 mins up and 30s down, which you can only take so much of on a non-powder day... I had high hopes they might get around to replacing one of them with something a little quicker. I know that's in the game plan for the intermediate term, assuming the new hotel and indoor waterpark prove profitable. I think if they were able to upgrade the lift system and add that long awaited terrain on the backside of the mountain, they could really carve out a nice niche.